A new start after 60: I read out my old diaries online – and my youthful secrets went viral | Life and style

BEtsy learner does not see himself as Tiktok Star – Although the New York Times described it as one – or as an influencer. That means payment and swag – everything she had is a free pen. “I'm really doing it for myself,” she says, “and for the people who follow me”.

Learner, 64, has 20 for 20 Years worked as a literary agent for writers like Patti Smith and Temple Grandin. She is the author of Sachiction and now of a debut novel, Shred Sisters – “a love letter to loneliness”. But “doing” about which she speaks is on Tikkok, Where she accumulated 1.5 m likes For videos in which she reads from the diaries that she wrote in her turbulent 20s.

“You don't know who you love, who will love you, what you will do for the work, what is your purpose,” she says in a post. “This morning I found a line in my diary that just summarizes [your 20s] Up: I have the feeling that today I don't know who I am. '”

Learner posts in her dressing dress without make -up. First she explored Boktok to support her authors. But with her own novel she began to post, hand it down and did not get any followers. “A friend told me you have to be in front of the camera and consider it your own TV channel … I thought: 'Well, maybe I will read from my old diaries.'”

She had kept one from the age of 11 after reading Anne Franks a young girl's diary. “I wrote my first poems there. I ventilated. I tried to analyze myself …” Your magazines from 12 to 18 years were lost when her car was stolen, but which from her 20s – about 30 volumes – were stowed away in a creeping room in her attic.

“My diaries are very sad. It's about being lonely, looking for love, looking for friendship and finding out who I was,” she says.

Learner describes himself as a “deceased bloomer”. It was admitted to Columbia's MFA poetry program and entered the public in late 20 when most editorial assistants came fresh from college. “I only fell in love with the age of 30. I never had significant relationships … I lost many of my teenage years and most of my 20s that have to struggle with depression.”

When she was 15 years old, her parents had brought her to a psychiatrist and she had been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. “I didn't want to accept that I had this disease. I fought a lot against her,” she says. Their memoirs from 2003, Eating and hatredDocumented her relationship with her weight, food, her depression and more and describes at one point in late 20 that it is on a bridge above the Hudson river.

The turning point came at 30. It found a psychotropicologist – who “found out” the right lithium dose (they worked together for 35 years) – and married.

Her diaries stopped. She had written her alone in bed at night. But now “I just didn't feel so sad and lonely,” she says.

Learner says for years: “I was interested in a lot of intensity.” “I primarily prioritize the stability.”

She had never thought that she would write a novel. But in 2019 She came through “four very tragic deaths”. She lost her mother, then her teen native and her nephew. Ruby and Campbell, who were killed by a drunk driverand her best friend, the writer George Hodgman, the died by suicide. “I still don't know who I mourn for at all times,” she says.

After these deaths, she began to write shredded sisters, some of which were inspired by the online training sessions – Shredding – You and her two sisters during covid to take care of each other, and as “a way of working through all of this grief”. She already writes another novel and as long as there is material in the diaries, and there is Tikkok, she will continue to share it. “It's about connecting and communicating,” she says.

“There is a constant stream of comments from children in the twenties who identify with my fights. This is really what keeps me running. I feel this connection to these children … I try to say that I felt the same. Stay. “

Shredded sisters Is out now, published by Vera Books. To support the Guardian, order a copy from the Guardian Bookshop. Delivery fees can apply.

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